The present invention relates to a plated fiber and a wire harness.
The present invention relates to a carbon fiber, a wire harness, and a plating method.
In recent years, diameter reduction and weight reduction are required of an electric wire so as to enhance the fuel efficiency, and a 0.13 sq electric wire and a 0.35 sq electric wire have been proposed. Such an electric wire is subject to tension during routing on a wiring board at the time of manufacture of a wire harness, and for making it possible to withstand the tension, a copper alloy is used in the conductor part with an attempt to increase the strength.
However, increasing the strength of an electric wire by using a copper alloy is approaching the limit, and it is difficult for an electric wire to achieve greater diameter reduction and greater weight reduction. To solve this problem, a plated fiber obtained by applying plating to a high-strength fiber such as aramid fiber, PBO (poly(p-phenylenebenzobisoxazole)) fiber and polyarylate fiber has been proposed for use as a conductor of an electric wire (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 and 2). In addition, those of which breaking strength or impact load is studied so as to provide a non-breaking electric wire by using a high-strength conductor where a plating layer is provided a high-strength organic synthetic fiber, have been also proposed (see, Patent Documents 3 and 4).
Conventionally, it has been studied to apply a metal plating onto a carbon fiber. However, the carbon fiber has a problem that the wettability with a plating solution is poor and the throwing power and adherence of the metal plating are low. To solve this problem, a method of coating a carbon fiber with an alkaline degreasing solution and thereby adjusting the wettability on the carbon fiber surface has been proposed (see, for example, Patent Document 5).
[Patent Document 1] JP-A-2008-130241 (the term “JP-A” as used herein means an “unexamined published Japanese patent application”)
[Patent Document 2] JP-A-2009-242839
[Patent Document 3] Japanese Patent No. 5,517,148
[Patent Document 4] JP-A-2014-150022
[Patent Document 5] JP-A-2007-186823